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To Pickle Damsons
Take seven pounds damsons, wash and wipe them dry, three pounds sugar, one-half ounce cinnamon, half-ounce mace, half-ounce cloves, half-ounce allspice.
With one quart strong vinegar and the sugar make a syrup, and pour it over the fruit boiling-hot. Let it stand twenty-four hours; repeat the boiling next day, and let it remain twenty-four hours longer; then put all on the fire together and cook till the fruit is done.--Miss D. D.
A three-day sweet pickle of the English type, meant to be eaten with cold ham, mutton or game rather than as a jam. The staged pouring is the whole method: it draws the syrup into the fruit without cooking the plums to a pulp.
- Don't rush the three daysEach hot pour-and-rest cycle sets the skins and lets syrup penetrate slowly. Boiling everything together on day one gives you burst fruit floating in thin liquid.
- Damsons and substitutesTrue damsons are small, oval, blue-black plums, tart and thick-skinned, and usually cling to the stone. Italian prune plums are the closest supermarket stand-in; avoid soft dessert plums, which collapse. Leave the stones in as the original assumes, and warn whoever eats them.
- Prick the skinsNot stated, but standard for this style. A few pin pricks in each plum keep the skins from splitting untidily during the first hot pour.
- Whole spices, tied upHalf an ounce of ground spice comes to roughly 2 tablespoons, though whole spices vary a good deal in bulk. Use whole cinnamon stick, blade mace, cloves and allspice berries in a muslin bag, not ground: ground spice turns the syrup muddy and gritty and this much of it will be aggressive.
- "Strong vinegar"A nineteenth-century household vinegar of good strength, though period strengths varied; a modern cider or malt vinegar at 5 percent acidity is a reasonable substitute. Do not dilute it; the acid is what keeps the pickle.
- The syrupDissolve the 3 lb sugar in the quart of vinegar over gentle heat before it boils, or it will catch. Bring to a full boil and pour over the fruit immediately.
- "Till the fruit is done"On the third day the plums should be translucent and tender but still whole, roughly 10-20 minutes at a bare simmer once everything is together. Lift the fruit out and reduce the syrup separately if it looks thin.
- Yield and keepingSeven pounds of fruit gives around six to seven pints. The original assumes crocks in a cold cellar; today, either refrigerate the jars and eat within a couple of months, or pack hot into sterilised jars and process in a boiling-water bath following current times for a high-acid fruit pickle.
- Rest before eatingThe spice needs a month in the jar to settle into the syrup. Opened straight away it tastes raw and vinegary.
Pickled damsons came to Virginia kitchens from English practice, where sweet-spiced plums, walnuts and mushrooms were standard accompaniments to cold roast meat on the sideboard. The damson takes its name from Damascus he eastern Mediterranean and reached Britain early enough to become a hedgerow tree there. Its tartness and firm skin make it better suited to spiced vinegar than to eating out of hand, which is why so many old books send it to the pickle jar or the jam pot rather than the fruit bowl. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, and the sign-off "Miss D. D." is one of the initialled credits that appear alongside the many contributors given by full name.